I am looking for books about the physics of DSLR, including modern photography optics and sensor electronics. If I already have some books on optics and electronics, I have found fairly hard to find good resource for these fields taking photography as a basis, with examples taken from photography and chapters dedicated to lenses optics for instance.

So far what I have found is either too generic, or, if dealing with photography, lacks the physical expertise I would like to get (I mean books with equations. Everybody loves them.)

Good books for physics of photography exist, but they are quite old, the last good I have found were written by Kingslake in the 70s and definitely miss the non-optical part, and the optical stuff is a bit old-fashioned now (but very nice books BTW).

To sum up, I would like:

Very technical references

Dealing with physical issues specific to DSLRs and modern photography, such as diffraction limits, image stabilization, properties of coatings, noise correction - whatever you can think of actually...

EDIT: Based on the first results and a quick glimpse at the references given, I would recommend:

The Manual of Photography looks like a bible. Everything seems to be included. It could be a bit more technical, but it gives a lot of bibliography to go deeper if necessary.

4 Answers
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Books by Henry Horenstein are very technical, but are unfortunately more to do with film photography.

Thom Hogan (bythom.com) writes a lot of technical information about sensors. Well technical to most people, not a lot of equations. He references the book Manual of Photography by Ralph Jacobson - "the highly technical and math-filled volume that defines much of the state-of-the-art". Sounds like it might be what you're looking for.

The ninth edition of Manual of Photography is by Ralph Jacobson, but it seems that the tenth edition (2010) is by Elizabeth Allen & Sophie Triantaphillidou and it is "… completely reworked to include the latest research on digital imaging."
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koiyuJul 18 '11 at 9:03

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Took a look at Henry Horenstein's books: nice but a bit too aimed at practical aspects and not enough theory for what I was looking for. A good pick if you want good explanations of phenomena without too much in-depth physics, I think.
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drolexJul 18 '11 at 11:43

More than once it has explained to me the "why" details of a lighting effect that I thought should have worked differently or shouldn't have been on the film to begin with - they are particularly good at explaining what happens to light on different surfaces and why.

I've had and used the 2nd ed for years and I see that the 4th edition is about to be published in Sep of this year

Yeah, I have come across this one, but didn't find the time to really take a look at it. I'll give it a try, thanks for the review.
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drolexJul 18 '11 at 8:43

I recently borrowed up a copy of this book from my local public library and I agree that this text will do more than just give a few pointers to help a novice. I can see that it would easily find a place as a reference for a growing studio-minded photographer. I like this book enough that I'll purchase a copy for my personal use.
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smigolJul 19 '11 at 5:57

I don't know of many books, but Cambridge in Color has some of the best tutorial/technical information you will find anywhere, and its free. Written by an engineer who took up photography while studying at Cambridge, the author takes pains to instruct not only how, but why certain principles occur in photography. Also great info on sensors, etc in digital photography.

Thanks, real academic books, that means they are both well suited for my needs and pretty expensive :). I remember having tried to find the first, which looks definitely good, could you develop on it? I already knew the second one - if I was honest I would find it is the best match for what I wanted - but I didn't like the way it was written: going very fast in-depth and jumping to another subject, more like a collection of papers than a real book (to me). The third looks nice for sensors and better than the one I have (CMOS/CCD Sensors and Camera Systems) for photography.
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drolexJul 19 '11 at 19:03

I had to borrow both books through inter-library loan so I didn't have much time with them. I used the second book more, and don't remember much about the "Applied photographic optics" book. I do wish I had copies of both books.
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JMDJul 19 '11 at 22:50